WASHINGTON - San Angelo Rep. Mike Conaway hopes the Supreme Court agrees with him that President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is an unconstitutional law.

Conaway considers the law an infringement on states' rights.

"It's an overreach of federal authority into the quiet lives of every American, and it should not stand," the Republican from Midland said.

The Supreme Court announced Monday it would hear oral arguments on the controversial Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The unusually long hearing — five and a half hours — is expected in March.

Conaway and other Republicans have long taken issue with the 2010 law's individual mandate requiring Americans to buy health care insurance, starting in 2014, or pay a penalty.

"For the federal government to require everybody in the country to purchase a commercial product — and you will be fined and whatnot if you don't — I think is unconstitutional and a vast overreach of federal power," West Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Republican from Clarendon, said.

Conaway said nipping the law in the bud soon is the right idea.

"Millions, if not billions, of dollars are being spent across the country in anticipation of this ill-fated or ill-advised, ill-conceived takeover of the national health care industry," he said.

West Texas Rep. Randy Neugebauer, a Republican from Lubbock, said the Supreme Court review comes not a day too soon for small businesses and taxpayers.

"Twenty-six states have called for its repeal, along with small-business owners everywhere who seek relief from its crushing burden and uncertainty," Neugebauer said.

Texas is among the states calling for repeal of the health care overhaul.

"With the Supreme Court's decision to hear our challenge to Obamacare, the federal health care law is closer to an end," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said.

The president also welcomed the Supreme Court review.

Supporters of the law point to the Constitution as the authority for the individual mandate.

"The people who are claiming that this is the end of the law are trying to make up for the fact that they don't have anything in the Constitution backing them, by screaming really loudly," Ian Millhiser, a policy analyst for the Center for America Progress, said.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate commerce among the states, Millhiser said.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act "is a law that regulates trade in health care," he said.

Thornberry wasn't buying that argument.

Regulating trade is different from requiring the purchase of health insurance or payment of a punitive fine, he said.

But the individual mandate isn't the only thing he doesn't like about the law.

"I also object to the big growth in government, the cost of it creating new entitlements, the federal intrusiveness of regulating health care in many, many different ways," Thornberry said.

Millhiser said the Supreme Court is reviewing the health care overhaul because one of four appeals courts that considered the law ruled against it.

But federal law has to be uniform in the states, so the Supreme Court is weighing in, he said.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled the individual mandate to buy insurance was not within the authority of Congress.